Zuckerberg accuses Apple of still taking advantage of Steve Jobs’s legacy 20 years later

Zuckerberg made the remarks during a nearly three-hour podcast with Joe Rogan, in which they discussed Meta's policy changes and shift against diversity and inclusion policies, as well as Meta's conflicts with Apple and its policies.

The conversation actually started with Rogan's issues with Apple. Rogen said he "switched from Apple to Android" in part because he "didn't like being attached to one company." He also doesn't like Apple's AppStore policies. He said: "What Apple Store does is charge users 30%. It seems crazy that they can get away with it."

"I have some issues with this," Zuckerberg said. While he thinks the iPhone is "obviously probably one of the most important inventions of all time," he thinks the rules Apple has set "feel very arbitrary."

Zuckerberg said Apple has "completely tied up anyone else's ability to make products that connect to iPhones in the same way as Apple's own products, like AirPods." Zuckerberg said that if Apple allowed others to use its protocol, "there might be better competitors than AirPods."

Of course, there are also business reasons behind Zuckerberg’s dissatisfaction. Meta has long been at odds with Apple, which takes a 30% commission from some App Store transactions. Apple's restrictions on iOS have made it harder for Meta to compete on hardware and wiped out billions of dollars in advertising revenue. Zuckerberg said that if Apple's "random rules" didn't apply, based on his "backward calculation," Meta would have made "twice as much profit or whatever."

Apple is facing increasing pressure to open up. It has made changes in the European Union over new laws targeting its policies and faces a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice over its smartphone monopoly. But the company seems intent on maintaining its closed ecosystem until forced to change.

Zuckerberg believes that Apple's reliance on "keeping its own stuff" will ultimately harm the company. Apple "hasn't really released a lot of innovative products," he said. He said that the technology industry is "super dynamic" and "if you don't do it well for 10 years, you will eventually be defeated by others."

"No more physical and digital worlds"

Zuckerberg also touched on a number of other tech topics during his conversation with Rogan, including artificial intelligence and how he views screen time playing Minecraft with his daughter. One area he spent some time discussing was neural interfaces and how the physical and digital worlds will come together.

For example, he argued that "it's going to be a while before we can really widely deploy anything that can plug into your brain," and (naturally) he talked about the benefits of a wrist-based neural interface that Meta is developing as part of its Orion augmented reality glasses.

Zuckerberg envisions a future world where people can use neural interface wristbands and glasses to text friends or artificial intelligence, and the glasses will give answers. He also believes that as smart glasses and even contact lenses as computing platforms become more and more developed, the Internet will be "superimposed" on the physical world.

"I think we're basically going to be in this wild world where most of the world is going to be physical, but there's going to be more and more virtual objects or people holographically interacting with different objects or people in different ways," he said. "There's no longer a physical world and a digital world. We're in 2025. It's a world."